Getting new customers and encouraging past buyers to buy again are the biggest challenges an ecommerce business faces in today’s competitive market. Among new-age sales and marketing developments such as search engine optimization, social network, and online ads, email marketing is still the most affordable and fruitful technique to generate and improve ecommerce sales.

Email marketing brings about 23% sales to an ecommerce business. You can establish meaningful connection and trust with your prospects and customers with the help of email marketing.

Here are some of the ways to boost your ecommerce sales email marketing -

1. Prepare a Genuine and Solid Database –

First step to successful email marketing is to make a solid database subsuming your prospects and existing customers. Without real and relevant people on your database, your email marketing strategy – no matter how effective your content is or how great your deal is – isn’t going to give you any return.

Best practices to build a powerful ecommerce customer database include –

• Asking your page visitors to sign up (for an account or chat)
• Including the information of existing customers in your database
• Creating and sending high-value content and attractive offers through email (content that could be helpful for your customers and prospects)
• Encouraging the customers and new signups to subscribe to your mailing list
• Urging your subscribers to share your content

When your content gets shares, you reach an expanded network. With that, you also get a chance to increase the number of recipients in your emailing list or database. Make sure that your sign-up process or share button is easy-to-use and takes fewer steps to complete.

Another way, you can broaden your contact list is by running some campaign or contest – asking your social network followers to sign-up and participate.

You could also run social and search engine ads highlighting your offers and deals to gain the attention and contact info of your prospects.

2. Segment Your Database –

Once your database is ready, it is time to segment it. Divide your contact list on a number of factors such as age, sex, location, browsing history, and buying patterns. For example: If a customer has recently bought a cell phone from your ecommerce store, you can send him/her promotional email(s) listing customized offers on phone cases and screen guards.

Did you know that 49% of users report that they receive irrelevant emails every day?

The very idea of segmenting database is to send your customers emails that are relevant for them – the emails offer them some value. Segmentation helps you send the right email to the right person. If you can dig more about the location of your contacts, you can send them customized offers at the right time.

Dividing your email list on different factors doesn’t just enhance the effectiveness of your email database, but also increases open rate, click through rate, and the chances of sales wins, while decreasing the percentage of spam reports.

3. Strategize Effective Email Campaigns –

After segmentation, you have to plan for your email campaigns that yield. Apparently, every festival, holiday, and long weekend is a great time to boost your ecommerce sales. So, create an email campaign calendar, involving important and major events of the year or month to ensure you don’t miss out reaching out to your customers and prospects.

When a visitor signs up, he/she should be sent a welcome email. Welcome emails have a very positive influence on the customer’s mind.

Visitors also enter their date of birth while signing up for an account on your ecommerce website. You should also send an email to wish them luck, along with a gift or discount offer, on their birthday.

Both the welcome email and subscriber’s birthday greeting email should be on your email campaign calendar. While welcome email and birthday greeting can be programmed and scheduled easily, the emails for festivals and holidays require a little more effort.

You need to plan your offers, design and test how your email looks on the web and phone, and send it to your segmented database. Yes, you could and should consider sending different offers to your segmented contacts.  

4. Turn Customers into Fans –

Offer your customers quality service, and they become your loyal customer, spreading the good word about you. However, in the modern era where every ecommerce business is following the same practice, it is quite a challenge to build customer loyalty.

Amazon sends a key ring to its Prime Members, along with a welcome card, on their physical address. You could also consider doing it, however, with a difference. You can get your cards and gifts printed with personalized messages at iCustomLabel. How cool would that be!

Here also, you will need to give your contact database a careful look to avoid sending wrong gifts or offers. For example, if it is the birthday of a twenty something guy, it would be wise to send them a gift card for men’s accessories such as tie, wristwatch, bracelet, etc. – just like The Ellabing Haberdashery online store does.

Bottom Line:

If you are an ecommerce store looking to enhance your sales, email marketing should be there in your growth strategy. Amid the dominance of social media marketing, email is still one of the most effective sales channels that help you directly connect with your customers and prospects.

However, you need to understand that emails work only if they are being sent to the right person. Therefore, database segmentation is the most important step before you start or revive your email marketing strategy.

Author: Smith Willas

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